Electrical – Altium PCB layout: Measure points

altium

Example of how kicad displays differential data

Cntl + M: Will get you a measurement tool however I wish to make faster measurements.

In kiCad, you can press space bar and it gives a 0,0 origin reference measurment to the cursor. (Displayed on the UI)

Is there such a feature in Altium, I need quicker measurement references than the cumbersome measure tool.

Solved

Shift + D changes the heads up view to add dx dy measurement and INSERT zeros the dx dy origin point to your cursor

Best Answer

In altium, the heads up display shows the dx and dy from wherever you last clicked. Show the heads up display with Shift+H.

It has something called hotspot snap where it attempts to guess the thing you are interested in when clicking, for calculating the hotspot origin. Ie if you click on a via 1 mil off the center, it will think that you actually want the via itself and will set the hotspot origin at the exact center of it.

If you want more precise measurements then you'll need to either move the origin or jot down the locations of things and do the math.

There are also some other options you can play with in View > Board Insight

Heads up display